Jake Markut
(he/him)
Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry
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Hall of Science 326
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509-527-5154
Jake Markut came to Whitman College’s Chemistry Department in 2024 and teaches General Chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Education at the University of Illinois Chicago under the mentorship of Dr. Donald Wink. His research work looked at how people use their hands to talk about chemistry. Professor Jake is originally from Florida and earned his B.A. in Chemistry from the University of South Florida.
Areas of Expertise/Interest
Chemical Education Research, Gesture, Metaphor, Active Learning
Ph.D. Chemical Education
University of Illinois Chicago
June 2024
M.S. Chemistry
Washington State University
May 2019
B.A. Chemistry
University of South Florida
May 2017
My primary research interest is in the use of gestures by novices and experts to communicate chemistry-related concepts and how those gestures might be used to enhance pedagogy. As such, I am interested in refining design principles for the deliberate and structured implementation of gesture based on established domain-general and DBER research. My work focuses on naturalistic environments and qualitative data, and is reinforced by a framework of my design that facilitates the systematic and concise description of gestures.
Markut, J. J., & Wink, D. J. (2024). Symmetry Elements Embodied by Students’ Hands: Systematically Characterizing and Analyzing Gestures in Inorganic Chemistry. Journal of chemical Education, 101(3), 819-830. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c01110
Markut, J. J. (2023; poster) Symmetry Elements as Gestures: Towards Establishing Conventionalized Gestures in the Inorganic Chemistry Classroom. Gordon Research Conference: Chemistry Education Research and Practice, Bates College, Maine.
Markut, J. J. (2023) How the hands speak louder than words: Gestures embodying symmetry elements in inorganic chemistry. X-DBER 2023 Conference, Virtual (hosted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln).
Markut, J. J.; Cabana, J.; Mankad, N. P.; Wink, D. J. (2023). A Collaborative Model-Based Symmetry Activity for the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory. Journal of Chemical Education, 100(4), 1633-1640. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00037
Markut, J. J. & Wink, D. J. (2022) Unprompted Student Gestures in a Model-Based Inorganic Symmetry Activity. 27th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, West Lafayette, Indiana.